Teachers Who Leave: An Exploration of Exit Decisions and Loyalty

• In Event: Exploring Dispositions in Lives of Teachers

Abstract

Half of all teachers in the United States leave the classroom within their first five years. This article examines the stories of a particular group of leavers, former teachers who made significant investments in their teacher training and who taught for at least three before making the decision to exit. The narratives of these ‘invested leavers’ are used to illuminate trends of attrition found in the quantitative literature and to explore the challenges these teachers’ choices pose for Hirschman’s model of Exit, Voice, and Loyalty.

Author

• Jeremy Glazer, Stanford University